Mellanox Defines Cloud Reference Architecture

With large numbers of IT organizations now trying to figure out how to actually build and deploy a private cloud, there’s an acute need for reference architectures that will help speed that process along.

The latest example of a cloud reference architecture was unveiled this week by Mellanox Technologies, a provider of Ethernet switches that is promoting the adoption of a recently unveiled Mellanox Open Cloud platform.

Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing for Mellanox, says the CloudX reference architecture not only defines the networking layers, but also provides the framework for connecting industry standard servers and storage systems that can be connected using Ethernet or Infiniband switches.

Mellanox, says Shainer, is not too particular about the networking software used to connect all the elements of the cloud together. Via the Mellanox Open Cloud platform, Mellanox has embraced open source networking software across a full range of its switches.

While there’s no shortage of reference architectures for the cloud, the thing that most IT organizations would do well to remember is that clouds of any type have a lot of complex interdependencies. That means that the probability of creating a bottleneck that would adversely affect application performance somewhere along the line is fairly high. Given the fact that there’s a lot of competition in the cloud these days, starting with a reference architecture that has already worked out where most of those bottlenecks can occur might be viewed as a prudent act of self-preservation.

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